Appendix A
Acronyms and Units

File: Steve/Courses/2014/s2/its332/def.tex, r3455

A.1 Acronyms

ARP

Address Resolution Protocol. Given an IP address, determines the corresponding MAC address. ARP at Network Sorcery: http://www.networksorcery.com/enp/protocol/arp.htm. IETF RFC 826: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc826.txt

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets.

DHCP

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. Allows IP addresses (and other information like DNS servers and netmasks) to be automatically assigned to computers in a network (rather than the user/administrator assigning the IP address manually). Requires the computer to be configured to use DHCP, and a DHCP server to be running on the local network. IETF RFC 2131: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2131.txt

DNS

Domain Name System. Used to find the IP address that corresponds to the computer with a given domain name. Perform DNS queries at http://www.dnsstuff.com/.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language. Language commonly used for creating web pages. W3C HTML Specification: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/

HTTP

HyperText Transfer Protocol. Transfer web content, often HTML but now many other formats, between a client and server. W3C HTTP Specifiaction: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/

ICMP

Internet Control Message Protocol. Testing and diagnosing problems in the Internet. Applications such as ping and traceroute often use ICMP. ICMP at Network Sorcery: http://www.networksorcery.com/enp/protocol/icmp.htm

IEEE

Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Professional society, which includes a standards organisation that has produced many LAN standards, as well as electrical/electronic interface standards. http://www.ieee.org/

IETF

Internet Engineering Task Force. Technical organisation that produces standards (and other documents), known as RFCs, for many Internet technologies. Examples: IP, TCP and .

IP

Internet Protocol.

LAN

Local Area Network. Examples: IEEE 802.3 Ethernet, IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN, Token Ring.

RFC

Request For Comment. A type of document published by IETF. It may be an official standard, advice, experimental protocol or informal discussion document.

RTT

Round Trip Time. The propagation time from a source to destination and back to source.

TCP

Transmission Control Protocol.

UDP

User Datagram Protocol.

W3C

World Wide Web Consortium. Standards organisation that produces standards for the web, such as HTML, XML and CSS.

WAN

Wide Area Network. Examples: PDH, SDH, ATM, Frame Relay.

XML

eXtensible Markup Language.

A.2 Units

The following may differ from standard practice. That is, the defintions may not always be true under all conditions—they are chosen manily for the simplicity of the classes.

A Byte, normally abbreviated with an uppercase B, contains 8 bits, where a bit is normally abbreviated with a lowercase b.

The following unit prefixes are commonly used:

T

tera, 10¹²

G

giga, 10⁹

M

mega, 10⁶

k

kilo, 10³

m

milli, 10^-3

μ

micro, 10^-6

n

nano, 10^-9